Slashdot videos: Now with more Slashdot!

View

Discuss

Share

We've improved Slashdot's video section; now you can view our video interviews, product close-ups and site visits with all the usual Slashdot options to comment, share, etc. No more walled garden! It's a work in progress -- we hope you'll check it out (Learn more about the recent updates).

Technically Inept writes with the lead paragraph from a report at Comics Alliance: "To the best of my knowledge, Jorge Cham's Piled Higher and Deeper (better known as PhD Comics) is the first webcomic to be adapted into a feature-length film. After months spent on a college campus screening tour, Piled Higher and Deeper: The Movie is finally available for purchase and streaming. And, like its comic inspiration, the PhD pokes fun at the frustrations of graduate students, those noble folks who enter academia with dreams of changing the world and inspiring young minds, only to be thwarted by indifferent professors, lazy undergrads and the ever-present fear that they'll never graduate." The short review linked makes this sound like a very watchable movie.

Are you kidding? xkcd is total shit. Let me sum it up for you: whimsical stick figures white knighting on the internet!!!!! But with pop culture references!!!!! LOLOLOLOL. Penny Arcade is better, but the blogs are frequently better than the actual strips. PhD comics is alright, but it's not exactly what I'd call great.

Agree. So often I check the latest xkcd and am dumbstruck by how profoundly not funny it is. I think he should just let it die now (though I'm of course ignorant of important issues such as how much money it's raking in....)

The disturbing thing is that someone out there agrees with me, but only when I phrase it in the most trollish and asshole-ish way possible. Whoever you are, I appreciate your moderation points, but you need to take a step back and think about whether you've made the right decisions in your life. You're modding up an overt troll made by a bipolar poster who's off his medication and thinks it's hilariously funny to flame people on Slashdot. If you're OK with this, then I'm OK with it, too. But you need to think long and hard about this.

The disturbing thing is that someone out there agrees with me, but only when I phrase it in the most trollish and asshole-ish way possible.

There's trolling and there's trolling. The fact is that xkcd fans are basically like Ron Paul fans; you say something about their beloved comic / the Fed and they go ballistic. Are you really a troll, or are they simply a hoard of thin-skinned losers?

Why is the parent modded as flambait? It might be provocative, but everything in the post is essentially true. It notes webcomics of actual quality, and explains why xkcd is indeed bad nowadays.

The only weird thing about the post is, that I can't really tell whether it recommends Subnormality (even in passing) or not. For the record, it should not, Subnormality is preachy, excessively wordy (albeit well drawn) tl;dr misuse of the comics medium.

Perry Bible Fellowship, even though PBF is a pretty much a ripoff of ["The Parking Lot is Full"]. Still, it ripped off the best, so it gets an honorable mention.

Are you actually serious, or have I just been trolled? I clicked the link, and they're nothing like each other in terms of humour or format (even allowing for the different artwork styles).

That "Ghastly's Ghastly Comic" one you linked to was actually pretty funny (if very NSFW)...

I actually noticed- and was pleased to see- that no-one had mentioned the once-geek-favourite "User Friendly" yet (until I opened my big mouth just then). As I once said elsewhere...

Aside from its "moderately-promising 14-year-old still showing too much influence from the Teach-Yourself-Cartooning book" drawing style, User Friendly has always relied on its geek-friendly subject matter and viewpoints to flatter the audience and obscure the fact that it's neither creative nor funny.

There's nothing creative about this. The "news" was a real-life item reported in many tech outlets about a year back [i.e. 2008]. The strip itself is just a lazy [and badly drawn] excuse to let the audience laugh again at that story- it adds nothing to it except an audience-pandering but uncreative aside."

Of all the things to moan about, a bit of javascript that adds a citation isn't exactly at the top of my list.

It sure is inconvenient when one is trying to copy just the title of the article to make a proper citation suitable for use with Cite.php on a MediaWiki site, and Tynt adds the crap anyway. Besides, the Tynt moan was the throwaway gag; my real moan was about the price.

I'm going to watch it, but as an amateur filmmaker, I'm bracing myself after looking at its imdb listing here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2066040/ [imdb.com]... The actors are all not real actors. I expect it's going to be silly in a painful way. The idea behind it is great, but, for the major roles at least, you can easily find actors willing to work for free who are worlds more believable than some lab rats trying to make fun of themselves.

Jorge actually explained this at our screening's Q/A. They are all actual graduate students. In fact, I am not sure exactly who wasn't a grad student but the vast majority of the film including camera operators, editors, sound etc are all grad students.

Jorge actually explained this at our screening's Q/A. They are all actual graduate students. In fact, I am not sure exactly who wasn't a grad student but the vast majority of the film including camera operators, editors, sound etc are all grad students.

Yup, if I recall correctly all of the PhD student characters were actually played by Caltech PhD students, except for the 'Nameless Grad Student' who was played by a Caltech undergrad. I actually had a minor speaking/dancing role in the film myself.:)

Jorge actually explained this at our screening's Q/A. They are all actual graduate students.

There's a big difference from acting like yourself when you're not trying to act like yourself, and trying to appear the way you think you would react given a particular simulated situation. Anyone can do the former. Only talented actors can pull off the latter. You have to learn to be "in the moment" and have real emotion in reaction to things you know are not actually happening. It's a lot more difficult than people give it credit for.

There's a big difference from acting like yourself when you're not trying to act like yourself, and trying to appear the way you think you would react given a particular simulated situation. Anyone can do the former. Only talented actors can pull off the latter. You have to learn to be "in the moment" and have real emotion in reaction to things you know are not actually happening. It's a lot more difficult than people give it credit for.

Ok and you failed to understand the whole point of using graduate students. This is a film about graduate school. Written by someone who went through and experienced it first hand. And filmed, acted, edited etc by actual graduate students. If he wanted good acting, he would have hired actors.

Wait, wait, wait a second! So you're saying that the actors are just acting like actors, they're not real actors? How can you tell an actor is real and is not just acting like an actor, anyway? What if someone is so good at acting that you can't tell they are an actor, likewise what if someone is so bad at acting you think they are just acting like they're not a real actor when in fact they are an actor after all.

Wait, wait, wait a second! So you're saying that the actors are just acting like actors, they're not real actors? How can you tell an actor is real and is not just acting like an actor, anyway? What if someone is so good at acting that you can't tell they are an actor, likewise what if someone is so bad at acting you think they are just acting like they're not a real actor when in fact they are an actor after all.

Ahem, yes it was. [comicbookresources.com] Not sure what all the fuss is about, only that this latest webcomic-to-movie was a geek-based character set rather than a more mainstream set, but it wasn't first.

I read a lot of webcomics and I always buy the printed compilations and other goodies. So I buying the DVD a good use of money to support the art of webcomics from which I derive much entertainment. That said, in my opinion, the movie was only so-so.

Pros:1) hit many great jokes from the strip - the conference in hawaii, Tajel's hippie-ness, lab role stereotypes, trying to secure funding, etc.2) I thought male leads more-or-less matched their hand-drawn counterparts3) I also thought DVD extras were entertaining, particularly the commentary

Cons:1) the main character had two different haircuts! Thought it was two different characters at one point! I found it really distracting.2) sound quality was awful3) acting for the main characters wasn't great, and was flat out awful for all the non-main characters4) the female leads were not well matched to their hand-drawn counterparts. This is more of a nit-pick than a real flaw. The girl playing Tajel was gorgeous, though!5) I thought Tajel & Slackenery's roles were marginalized, while Cecila's romance was given unnecessary prominence. I'll agree that Cecila and the unnamed main character are the "leads", but in the comic they don't dominate like they did in the movie.

Bottom line: the movie was made by students, with students, for students. And I think it showed. I don't recommend it for people who aren't fans of the strip. But for people who are fans of the strip I found it to be a good use of an hour, if for no other reason then seeing your favorite strips acted out live.

I honestly don't understand the response article about webcomics can provoke. I can understand different people taking the opportunity to share comics they like -- indeed, it's kinda nice -- but why so many would want to talk down comics (without, evidently, producing anything better of their own) is lost on me. Maybe it's just trolling but so much effort seems to go into it. Kinda sad.
Here's something nice about most webcomics : they're free. Which means people can enjoy those they like and do not have

From what I've read of this film so far, the grad students involved would have been better served if they had worked with the experts in the field: the drama department.

Why is it that so many "geeks" think they're good at everything just because they're experts in one or two fields? No one is good at everything, so sometimes you need to swallow your pride, shelve your ego, and call in people who are experts.

And it was just that: a web-comic turned into a movie. It felt like a lot jokes from the comic strips trying to be linked together by a poor story. I'm a PhD student myself, but I hardly ever found it funny, just lots of overused cliches about students. I don't think a lot of people in the audience liked it too.
It's not THAT bad, but it's not something I'd ever watch again or recommend.

well in IT trades / tech schools are better college CS just covers the wrong areas and the higher up you go the less tech skills are learned so it's the schools teaching plans that failed as well as HR who says they want a BA, MA, PHD for a Trades / Tech job.